Will Earth Appear Habitable to Alien Astronomers?- Ocean Glint May be a Clue

If an alien astronomer was observing Earth from space, might
they tell that this planet is well-suited for life? Are there revealing marks in the
atmosphere or from our oceans? These are several of the questions that regulators
of a lunar spacecraft pursued to answer when it took a little of a side task. As
a substitute of observing the Moon, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing
Satellite (LCROSS) momentarily observed Earth. A paper on the study, “Detection
of Ocean Glint and Ozone Absorption Using LCROSS Earth Observations,” is accessible
now on the pre-publishing site Arxiv and has been recognized in the
Astrophysical Journal. LCROSS, which was landed into the Moon as calculated in
2009, had a main mission to look for the marks of lunar water. Nearly a decade
before, NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission discovered clues of hydrogen in craters
at the Moon’s poles. The turfs are forever shadowed from the heat of the Sun.

LCROSS was to follow up on those observations, and it squared
the investment in spades. It followed what occurred after its spent Centaur
rocket stage collided into the crater Cabeus nearby the Moon’s south pole, and discovered
marks of hydrogen in spectroscopic measurements covering infrared and
ultraviolet light. When LCROSS crashed into the moon itself, clarifications
with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and others discovered about 100
kilograms of water in the crater it stamped in the regolith, which was about 20
meters (66 feet) across. The spacecraft was certainly successful in finding water
on the Moon. But might it also find water on our ocean-rich Earth at remoteness?
Scientists became interested about the view, particularly after seeing that our
oceans make a mirror-like replication, called “glint,” when a distant Earth seems
as a semicircular from the viewpoint of the Moon.